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The Russian-American START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) reducing the number of deployed nuclear warheads by each country expires on December 5, 2009. President Obama will be presented the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10, which he won, in part, because of his "vision and work for a world without nuclear weapons." The President clearly wants to have a signed START treaty extension in hand as he heads off to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize. The question I have is this: Will Obama's Nobel Prize have any influence on his decisions about the substance of the negotiations with the Russians over START I and on other issues?

President Obama's actions to date aren't reassuring. Eariler in the year, the President gave in to Russian demands that the United States abandon plans to deploy elements of missile defense in Central Europe as a condition of reaching a new agreement on strategic arms reduction. And just last week, Moscow announced "new concerns" about the Obama administration's four-stage plan to deploy an alternative missile defense system, specifically citing a threat to Russian security from the new, sea-based missile defense system Obama is proposing in lieu of the Poland/Czech system he scrapped under Russian pressure.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Clinton have reached agreement on a number of issues, but there are several issues "that are yet to be translated into the language of accord,” according to Lavrov in a recent interview. Lavrov highlighted two issues: the relationship between strategic offensive and defensive weapons, and the program being developed in the United States for strategic extra-nuclear weapons, whose destruction capacity is the same as that of nuclear missiles.

The Russians are clearly taking America for a ride on a missile defense, and Obama isn't interested in standing up to them or defending America's cold war allies against Russian hegemonic ambitions. The Russians, no doubt, will attempt to use the timing of Obama's trip to collect his Nobel Prize to their advantage in the negotiations over START I. Clearly, one of their goals will be to convince Obama to scrap other parts of America's missile defense program.

While the odds are not in our favor, let's hope the Obama Administration is more effective in these negotiations with the Russians than it has been in any to date. We can only hope that President isn't made even more malleable by the Nobel acceptance ceremony.

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